Royal Rumble?

[Stinger]

In several of my past posts I have mentioned that I believed I had a problem in my original Hive.  Upon the advice I received here, I removed a couple of frames of brood and eggs from my other hive and placed it into my problem hive (2 weeks ago).  My understanding is that if a hive is queenless they get noisy, which the problem hive never seemed to be.  Today when I visited my hives I found a worker dragging a dead queen away from the problem hive.  My mentor was with me and he also spotted this as we walked up to the hive.  At this point I am assuming that she was on the short end of a fight with another queen in the hive.  Is there any way to estimate the age of a queen?  As I looked her over she seemed to look good except for the fact that she was dead.  Her wings looked to be in very good condition and didn't show any other signs of wear and tear (like me).  I will inspect them next week if the weather permits and see if I have a queen doing her thing.  What do you think?

[Anonymous]

Sounds to me like you moved the queen from the second hive into the problem hive.  She may very well have been on the brood comb you moved over.  Your "good" hive may be queenless at this time.  I'd certainly have a look inside to see whats going on.  It they are raising a new queen, and you see no eggs, it is probably what happened.  Then you'll have to decide whether to leave them to their own resources or possibly order a queen in the fall.